6.1 Types of Semantics

Stephen Ullman classifies semantics into lexical semantics, which concentrates on word-meanings (p.33), and syntactic semantics, which deals with “the meaning of parts of speech, parts of the sentence, and other grammatical categories” (p.34). He also identifies descriptive and historical semantics. Descriptive semantics is the science of meaning, and diachronic semantics is the science of changes of meaning (p.171).

Howard Jackson gives several types of semantics: pragmatic, sentence, lexical, philosophical, and linguistic. He states that pragmatic semantics studies the meaning of the utterances in the context; sentence semantics studies the meanings of the sentences and meaning relations between the sentences; lexical semantics is the study of meaning in relation to words, including both the meaning relations that words contract with each other and the meaning relations that words have with extra-linguistic reality; philosophical semantics is concerned with logical properties of language; and linguistic semantics deals with all aspects of meaning in natural languages, from meaning of utterances in context to the meanings of sounds in syllables (pp.246-247). Georgios Tserdanelis and Wai Yi Peggy Wong add compositional semantics as well, by which they understand “the way the meanings of the whole sentences are determined from the meanings of the words in them by the syntactic structure of the sentence” (2004, p.216). Lexical semantics deals with a lexicon or a group of words in a language. While lexical semantics deals with individual words, compositional semantics deals with the meanings of phrases and sentences.

6.2 Word-Meaning

When people describe the world, they utter strings of sounds to convey the information to a listener. If they utter ‘Texas,’ they refer to a state, and if they utter ‘Chicago,’ they denote a city. The scholars who do not see any difference between the reference and the denotation apply a referential, or denotative, approach to the meaning of words. The entities they refer to, e.g., state and city, are named as referents, or denotata (singular denotatum). The commonly-known referential model of the meaning is Ogden/Richards basic triangle, which underlies the semantic systems of all the proponents of this school of thought.

As seen in this diagram, the sound-form of the linguistic sign [reivn] is connected with our concept of the raven which it denotes and through it with the referent, i.e. the actual bird. So, where is the place of meaning in this triangle? In the Course in General Linguistics, Ferdinand de Saussure (1959) calls the combination of a concept and a sound-image a sign (Later, he renames concept as signified and sound-image as signifier). He made the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign one of the most basic principles of the theory: “The bond between the signifier and the signified is arbitrary” (1916, p. 67). Since the linguistic sign is arbitrary, the sound-form is arbitrary and cannot be the meaning of the word. This can be easily proven by comparing the sound-forms of different languages, which convey one and the same meaning, e.g., English [reivn], Russian [voron], Croatian [gavran], Dutch [raf], Polish [kruk], and Turkish [kuzgun]. Moreover, homophones may have identical sound-form but different meanings, e.g., [ai]-[ai] (I-eye) and [nait]-[nait] (night-knight). Most concepts are intrinsically the same for the whole mankind in one and the same period of its historical development; however, the sound-forms will always be different.

Some scholars who accept the referential approach to the meaning of words believe that the meaning of a linguistic sign is the concept underlying it; therefore, they substitute meaning for concept in the basic triangle. We argue that meaning is not concept; for example, the concept of cold may be expressed with words chilly, cool, frigid, frosty, gelid, and icy, but their meanings are slightly different, which proves that meaning and concept are not identical.

Others recognize meaning as the referent. They believe that unless they have scientifically accurate knowledge of the referent, they cannot give a scientifically accurate definition of the meaning of a word. Bloomfield argues, “In order to give scientifically accurate definition of meaning for every form of a language, we should have to have a scientifically accurate knowledge of everything in the speakers’ world” (1935, p.139). The actual extent of a person’s knowledge makes this impossible. We argue meaning and referent are not the same. “Meaning is linguistic, whereas the denoted object or the referent is beyond the scope of language” (Ginzburg, p. 15). One and the same object can be denoted by more than one word of a different meaning; for example, raven in different contexts may be denoted as bird, Corvus corax, and corvid. These analyses show that the meaning of a word cannot be identified with any of the points of the triangle: a sound form, or concept, or referent.

For some scholars, refer and denote are separate terms. They apply the representational approach to meaning. For them, denotation is used for the relationship between a linguistic expression and the world, while reference is used for the action of a speaker in choosing the items in the world. Lyons defines denotation as “a relation that applies in the first instance to lexemes and holds independently of particular occasions of utterance” (p.208). He believes reference is “the relationship between an expression and what that expression stands for on particular occasions of its utterance” (p.174). He states that reference depends on concrete utterances, not on abstract notions. It is a property of only expressions. It cannot relate single lexemes (book) to extra-linguistic objects since it is an utterance-dependent notion. Reference is not generally applicable to single word forms, and it is never applicable to single lexemes (p.197). For instance, the expressions Mary’s book, great books, and on the book may be used to establish a relationship of reference with specific items as referents. In these examples, the reference of these expressions containing book is partly determined by the denotation of the lexeme book in the overall system of the English language. So, the difference between denotation and reference is that “reference is an utterance-bound relation and does not hold of lexemes as such, but of expressions in the context” (Lyons, 1977, p.208). Semanticists who adopted the representational approach claim that the ability to talk about the world depends on the mental models of it. In this approach, meaning derives from language being a reflection of the conceptual structures.

Another approach to meaning, which is expressed mostly by structural linguists, is a functional approach. The proponents of a functional approach claim that the meaning of a linguistic unit may be studied only through its relation to other linguistic units and not through its relation to either concept or referent. Two examples illustrate this approach, e.g., improve and improvement. Their meanings are different because they function in speech differently. If we compare the context where they function, we notice that improve may be followed by a noun or a pronoun: improve him, improve the relationship, and improve it and may be preceded by a noun or a pronoun: he improves the relationship. Improvement may be followed by a prepositional phrase, e.g., improvement in studies, and it can also be preceded by an adjective, e.g., considerable improvement. We notice words improve and improvement occupy different positions in relation to other words. The position of a word in relation to other neighbouring words is called the distribution of a word. Since the distribution of the words, improve and improvement, is different, they belong to different classes; therefore, they have different meanings. The same approach may be applied to polysemous words whose meanings can be realized only in the context. The lexeme table has several meanings: a piece of furniture, a supply or source of food, a group of people assembled at or as if at a table (the bargaining table), a systematic arrangement of data, a condensed enumeration (a table of contents), and the upper flat surface of a gem. These meanings can be realized only in the context. People normally respond to the meanings in the context. If someone mentions a program about big cats in Africa, the listeners understand that the speaker is not talking about stray cats in Dallas. If someone uses the phraseological unit let the cat out of the bag, the listeners understand that the meaning should be derived from the whole phrase, not just from each constituent of it. The functionalists believe “semantic investigation is confined to the analysis of the difference or sameness of meaning, and the meaning is understood essentially as the function of the use of linguistic units” (Ginzburg, Khidekel, Knyazeva, & Sankin, 1979, p. 17).